My father and mother took me to the meetings at the prayer-house from my early childhood. The prayer-house became my second home. Here I met a new and exciting world through the many visiting missionaries. They clothed themselves in colourful and strange costumes, showed slides and told of unbelievable things from the foreign lands where they had been. Then I started to dream of becoming a missionary travelling to distant countries with the good news of salvation and forgiveness. I read countless mission-books that nourished my dream of becoming a missionary preaching for those who had never heard the good news before.

I never became such a missionary that I was dreaming of as a boy. But the dream of being able to bring the good news to people who has never heard the gospel has been fulfilled many times. Still I am dreaming of going to new countries and new people-groups with the good news of the Kingdom of God, but my dreams are no longer tied up to the old missionary role.

In a youth-meeting at the prayer-house a young man testified about God have more to give and that we could experience more of his power. “God has more to give!” he said. He was met with a lot of opposition from the youth leaders and the other youth who confessed to have everything in Christ. But this young man had something about him that I could not explain but very much wanted to get hold of myself. His testimony caused me to read the New Testament with new eyes. It became clear to me that there was a big difference between what I saw in my own everyday life and what I saw in the Gospels and in the book of Acts of the Apostles. Then I started to dream of reaching the same kind of Christianity that I saw in the New Testament. This made me a pilgrim. I started on a journey which I have not finished yet.

The Bible has become the dream-book par excellence to me in the sense that the stories, promises, warnings and prophecies cause me to dream big dreams. The Bible gives me glimpses of God’s good dream for the world he has created. These glimpses are all the time creating dreams in me. I am dreaming God’s dream while I am a wake and while I sleep, while I read and while I pray, while I meditate and while I work with my hands. God’s dream is so big that I am never able to put words to it in a full way. Therefore I continue to put words to the dream in my attempt to paint a fuller picture of what I see in the Spirit, what I long for and work to bring to pass.

I am fully aware of that all attempts to put words to dreams and visions carry in themselves a danger of creating an image, an idol, a utopia which can’t be realised. The big words, the perfect conditions or way of life we describe can become the dream’s worst enemy. Others can think of our dream as demands or spiritual elitism in cultivating the pure fellowship of the strong and committed ones.